We had been due to meet Julie, Jack and Maisie today for a Winter Walk but sadly Julie rang to cancel as Maisie wasn’t very well so she thought she should keep her in, in the warm instead. It was a bit of a shame really as Ady went to Somerset today and we’d probably have gone with him if we’d not had the arrangement with Julie, but never mind.
After a full day inside yesterday I wanted to get out with the children today though so we decided to go out to the park after lunch. They really wanted to go to Drusillas, which would have been great but I didn’t have enough petrol in my car to get us there and back so regretfully had to say no to that one. They’d been particularly wanting to go to a certain park in Shoreham but then remembered that the see-saw roundabout type thing they wanted to go in is also at our local park too so changed their minds to going there instead.
We spent the morning very companionably doing various things. Davies went off and played in his room with his Doctor Who stuff for a while, Scarlett sat with me and had a go at sewing (I was denim bag making still), cutting out a green scrap into a triangle shape and using different coloured threads to ‘sew’ baubles onto it. I must get her a few bits actually, might try and do so as a Christmas present and sit with her and show her some stuff properly, maybe one of those sew your own doll kits that we could do together… They both gave lots of input on ideas for the bag and in their usual way were very encouraging about how ‘brilliant’ it was :). We flicked through sky channels watching a few documentary type things and then listening to Christmas music. Finally they got out a load of paper mats which lay out to create a town with roads, farms, carparks and so on. I think it originally came from the South of England show or similar and was probably a booklet that needed unstapling. That and the toy cars kept them amused for ages together.
We had lunch and then dressed up in many layers to go to the park. As we pulled up and parked Davies exclaimed on how it was empty and we had the place to ourselves and off they ran, whooping with joy at being in the sunshine with a whole park to themselves, a week before Christmas – it’s good to be a child 🙂
They both went on the zipwire, which Davies has really quite recently decided he likes. He’s watched older children play on it and obviously stored up tips and today worked out how to scramble onto the platfom by himself so just needed the handle handing to him and off he went doing stunts like jumping off onto the opposite platform and stuff 🙂
Scarlett managed to climb up the first couple of times, showing in her usual manner that far from being two years behind her big brother she is normally only a couple of paces before deciding she couldn’t do it after all. She is not totally comfortable with being 5 just yet and still maintains she ‘misses four’ and does a bit of regression of speech and behaviour every so often to remind us all she is ‘still the baby’ – today at the park I obviously made one comment too far about ‘what big children I have’ and got an ‘all the better to act like babies with’ type response! She did however jump off by herself with a real leap into the blue type attitude which she didn’t do last time we went there so I suspect she will get over her babyness again next time and just get on with it.
They then went on the roundabout, seesaw type thing for ages getting maximum enjoyment out of that before it ticked towards nearly an hour and we all started to freeze. Lucy and The Rs had joined us at the park so they came back and joined us at home afterwards.
Once I had established, reiterated and finally gotten through the ground rules about running screaming into the lounge every 30 seconds we managed a chat and they managed to play – it finally settled into Davies and Richard playing with a balloon while Tarly and Rebecca drew and that seemed to work just fine. I sewed while I chatted and finished off my new bag which I am very pleased with – not bad for a load of old offcuts from clothes that were residing in the rags bag under the kitchen sink to be used as dusters and I like the idea that I’m carrying round bits of D and S’s old clothes with me too :).
Lucy and The Rs left, Davies and Scarlett had tea and watched a bit more tv – Blue Peter was on because we talked about BP badges and liked the choir and loathed the two girls singing Santa Claus is coming to town at the end. Then Newsround which both children like watching – they love the news. We chatted a little bit about weather forecasts and how they can predict what the weather is going to be like which I think I gave a fairly vague answer to (and might present another gift opportunity, I’m sure I’ve seen weather kits / station stuff cheap in The Works!). Then we watched some Simpsons. Ady was late home so we snuggled up on the sofa once they were pj’d up to play mental blocks on facebook together til he came home.
Tonight I have constructed a box for my fudge, tied it very prettily with gold ribbon, written a nice poem to go with it and it’s all wrapped up and ready to go to the post office on guaranteed next day delivery tomorrow.
We have a Met Office Interactive weather presenting kit that was free from their website. You can make little powerpoint presentations with it. I think we emailed education@metoffice.gov.uk. Can’t remember if we had to explain about being home educators. Leo enjoyed it once or twice – so might be worth looking in to. We got a weather kit from The Works once – rain gauge and so on.
Ah, you have reminded me that we have that very thing too, or at least something along similar lines that I sent off for and stashed away as ‘useful some day’. Must dig it out.